Category Archives: politics

It’s been a lukewarm minute since I last posted here. Beyond indolence, there was a practical difficulty in that I didn’t have a computer and I absolutely abhor typing with my thumbs.

But no need to labour my absence. Here I am. Back in Canada of all places after 10 months on the road which saw me a tear a righteous strip up and down Arizona with my thumb, have a 4-month, beachfront war of the roses with my ex in Nicaragua, and then spend a similar amount of time in Utila, Honduras getting my divemaster certification (also having my first threesome).

And now I’m back in Canada. Not for long though -in 6 days I’ll be flying to Berlin to move in with my Frau, Anna, whom I met in Honduras. I’m excited to move to Berlin because it will be an opportunity to immerse myself among a critical mass of high-functioning people and see how it affects me.

Also excited to see mein frau -she’s teaching me to speak the German

But how does it feel to be back? Like shit honestly. Everything is falling apart at the seams. I feel unhealthy, depressed, angry, repressed and apprehensive. I don’t wanna be in this fuckin’ country. If I don’t hate it I feel hatred toward it. I didn’t want to come back and it’s only because Canada is kinda on the way to Germany that I decided to stop here.

It hasn’t all been bad of course. For starters I get to see family and friends which is always lovely. Particularly I was fortunate in that my two-week window back here happened to coincide with my cousin Sarah’s wedding

Smaller in stature; Larger in retardation

And of course, I got to see my grandmother, Sheila who has been struggling with cancer for the better part of my absence. After seeing her briefly at the wedding this past Saturday (her first foray out of the hospital since being admitted months ago), I again saw her at the hospital the next day. and we talked and joked in a very familiar way, almost oblivious to the sterile surroundings. As we left, I lingered behind to say what I understood might be my final good-bye to her.
We spoke some more and then I grabbed her hand and smiled -it wasn’t an affected smile trying to fight back tears or hide hurt, but rather a large and genuine smile as one soul may give to another as they part ways after a brief (30 year) and benevolent time together.
She said to me, “I guess this is good-bye for a long time.”
“Yes,” I responded, immediately aware that she was talking about more than just my upcoming departure to Germania.
At that she gave me a kiss and told me to take it with me. After one final squeeze I backed away from her still smiling, feeling more closure and peace than anyone in my position might reasonably expect to feel. She’s right, it is good-bye for a “long time,” but I’l see her again, either in this life or the next.

***********

The upshot of all this is that I’m ready to be on my way. As I mentioned above, I don’t feel healthy here. Three years ago was the last winter I spent in Canada and my health suffered drastically, partly as a result of the lack of light and probably partly as an indirect result of depression induced by coming out of a major break-up. From what I understand, Berlin’s weather is more comparable to southern Ontario’s weather than it is to Latin America’s and so this gives me pause.
As well as my concern for my own health, I know that in winter people tend to clam up, stay indoors and generally not be as open. I tend shine brightest in the sun and from what I can tell I have more power to uplift those around me in said circumstances. Bearing that in mind I will have to make extra efforts to engage and interact, rather than resign myself to wintry isolation.
I’m scared though.

Another thing that troubles me about being in Canada is the politically-correct culture. It has in the last few years had such a deleterious effect on me and my confidence as a man that repeated excursions to the developing world became a must; Say what you will about Central America and it’s problems with violence and machismo, but at least you can call something what it is without people complaining that you’re being offensive.
This PC culture, or perhaps more accurately this Socially-Sanctioned Self-Delusion, has indeed fallen to the periphery of my awareness in my absence from Canada, but it never quite disappeared as I was always plugged into social media. However, coming back here, even for a brief few weeks I’m sickened by the atrophied spirit of people.
Is it the weather getting people down? Perhaps.
Is it my own projections bringing me down? Likely that too.
Still, there is a resignation that people have to their own inability to say the things they’re inclined to say and act the way they’re inclined to act. I say “inclined” instead of “want” because I get the sense that people have convinced themselves they don’t want to speak truth. I recognize this behaviour because I suffer from it too and I’m trying to recover so perhaps I’m more sensitive to it. Yet even catching snippets of SNL and Seth Meyers I am reminded constantly that ostensible taboos are framed as “I can’t say _____” rather than “If I say ____ there will be consequences.” The latter is true but the former becomes a limiting belief and it’s a limiting belief that is pushed forcefully on the masses. This is perhaps what I object to most: the snarky voice of progressive western culture saying “You can’t do/say that!”
Don’t ever believe anyone when they tell you that you can’t do something -they are misguided devils trying to limit the godliness within you insofar as it finds expression through your voice and hands.
Normally it wouldn’t be too much of a problem cause I’m only here for two weeks, but I’m moving to Berlin which from what I understand is a very “progressive” city, and unfortunately the experiences I’ve had show me that progressiveness often goes hand in hand with repression. So in the same way I’ll have to double my efforts to keep my energy up, I’ll have to double my efforts to speak my own truth. My first order of business will be getting a job chopping vegetables -I need a few weeks of some mundane labour to process all the experiences and info I’ve been gathering over the last two years and I think prep work in a kitchen is the route I’ll go.

Winter is coming. My watch has just begun. But if there is any silver lining, it’s that I understand Germany is quite amenable to unskilled fighting-age males with darker complexions.

This is the face I’ll endeavor to face this new challenge and all new challenges with.

I spent the last month of this past winter in Nicaragua working at Carpe Diem eco-village.

It’s a project where volunteers can go and live for free in exchange for working roughly four hours every morning on the various eco-friendly construction projects being undertaken there. Given that it is a place where you are learning these processes for free it is actually quite a good deal as you leave the place enriched.

While it is not an intentional community proper, I did learn some things about human behaviour and initiative that I imagine would carry over. As I ultimately hope to live in such a community, I have wondered how people would sort out who does what and what would motivate them to do it when the monetary incentive was removed.

There are two primary lessons I learned:

1) The Culture Dictates Behaviour

Ghislain, the owner and originator of the project described to me how during the first season of the project he attracted a lower calibre of volunteer -people who wanted to come live for free but didn’t much care to fulfill the work obligation, preferring to go out boozing every night and recovering every day. It was an uphill battle, but as a start-up project he had to take what he could get. The larger problem was that when new volunteers would show up they were shown a culture of lazing and idleness and would either be turned off or fall into the same habits.

When this next season began in January he resolved to not indulge such behaviour and even had to ask some returnees to leave after the first day -a difficult choice for someone whose vision demands helpers. But ultimately this discernment paid off as the small core group of hard-workers attracted more people and inclined them to stay longer. I can attest to this as I initially passed through CD in early January 2016 (the beginning of the season) and opted to return in mid -February after finishing my ayahuasca pilgrimage to South America -that’s how impressed I was by the culture there. I stayed a month upon my return and was impressed by not only how much got done, but also by the work ethic of my peers.

It even brought out the inner maker in me and I frequently took
on small personal projects which I’m not always wont to do.

Still, it’s kind of funny to muse that if these same peers and myself had showed up last year, our more idle and lazy traits might have been nurtured too. But, by changing his standard he changed the culture of the camp into something more congruent with his vision. That’s powerful and profound.

2) Everyone Will Find Their Place

One volunteer showed up during my month there named Nina. Nina was a 19 year-old German girl who was neither diligent nor motivated when it came to work. Mixing cob, building walls, preparing food -these were all things that she would only make the most gestural efforts at, and those efforts only when she wasn’t too sick to do anything but lay about in camp.

At first I’ll admit I looked at her a bit resentfully as I carried heavy loads of building materials around and scraped the shit out of my limbs gathering the thorny firewood for our cooking fires. Quickly though, I overcame this resent because I am a firm believer in the maxim, “What you eat don’t make me shit’ -or simply, as long as you’re not posing a detriment to me it’s not my business. When I got over myself and my ego in this manner I could look at Nina a little more dispassionately and objectively. What I saw was that while she laid about she was engaging and playing with the young Nicaraguan toddlers who lived next to us and who would always wander into our camp to observe and play. It occurred to me that if this were an intentional community where people were having children and building lives, I would be grateful to have a Nina around -someone who relished being with kids and playing with kids…

…and not simply just acting like a kid.

Then I thought about myself -for the duration of my stay I woke up at 5:45 every morning to get the fire going and the water boiling by the time people started waking up 6:30. On top of that I would do the wake-up alarm by singing at the top of my lungs every morning. Nobody told me I had to but I wanted to because I wanted to have breakfast and coffee before work started at 7:30, and of course because I love singing. As well, I always gravitated toward gathering firewood and building fires -I just liked to do these things and they needed to be done.

On a similar note, my friend Marijo usually did meal prep because she was good at it and liked to do it. Nobody said she had to.

And I think this is the larger point. I saw people finding their equilibrium and their place within a society in a very natural, very organic way. And this gave me hope that the community I’m looking to build and be a part of one day just might work.

Despite how the two may be conflated in the derision and pejorative of the self-appointed guardians of the status quo, I still draw a distinction between conspiracy theory and critical thought. More specifically, I try my hardest to stay grounded in the latter without running away wildly in the realm of the former. That said, conspiracy theories can be fun shit and from time to time I like to put my tinfoil hat on and make bold predictions about current conspiracies and possible future ones.
And for the record, I’m not making any accusations here. Instead I’m acknowledging not simply possibilities, but plausibilities. For the purposes of this post, I’m less concerned with what is provably true and more concerned with what could be true.

The Activism ConspiracyLook at all of the issues-based groups that are all agitating for change along certain gendered, racial or sexuality lines. Instead of trying to transcend a system which disenfranchises some for the benefit of others they are simply fighting for more without addressing the structural causes of deprivation. To me, this is very reminiscent of divide and conquer and it strikes me as not only plausible but highly likely that certain parties, whether corporate or governmental, might have an interest in infiltrating and radicalizing issues-based groups so as to keep them from working in harmony and addressing underlying problems.

The Identity Conspiracy
Closely related to the Activism Conspiracy, the ID Conspiracy has to do with the notion of “celebrating our differences.” We see this on the macro scale with nationalism and the Olympics, but also, at the micro scale with individuals making identity associations with skin colour, gender, sexuality, regions, schools of thought, etc. This is an inherently divisive practice which might be promoted by the same provocateurs behind the Activism Conspiracy. I think the ultimate end objective of the ID Conspiracy is to not simply divide people but to make each fractional demographic seek legal ratification as their benchmark of legitimacy. By seeking this ratification and the associated rights and privileges afforded by being part of a legally recognized group, they think they are being empowered but they are really playing by the establishment’s rules.

Also, they are doing violence through separation simply by defining themselves as different from other human beings who they are fundamentally the same as.

The “Conspiracy Theory” Conspiracy TheoryThis insidious conspiracy happens when extreme, paranoid objections to a certain practices are inserted into related discussion to marginalize legitimate objections. We see this one at work when people talk about flouride in the water. Paranoid types love to talk about how Hitler put sodium flouride into the water in concentration camps to make people docile. We’re also told that flouride calcifies (flouridifies???) our pineal gland or “third eye,” preventing us from achieving enlightenment, and so on. What is not so commonly discussed is how sodium flouride is simply an industrial waste product which crafty businessmen have sold as tooth-protecting snake-oil to municipalities (probably with bribes) so they could turn a profit from their waste product rather than paying for costly disposal. To deal with objections to the municipalities buying poison, interested groups flood the internet with fringe articles about NWO flouride conspiracies so that anyone with a legitimate objection is immediately lumped into the conspiracy camp.
We see this at play with chemtrails too. Nobody is talking about how plane exhaust is horribly polluting the upper atmosphere because the conversation is so skewed in the direction of what harmful carcinogens and morgellons– causing chemicals are being deliberately released as part of some “Satanic New World Order Depopulation Agenda.” And who is skewing the conversation in these extreme paranoid directions? Well that is really the heart of this particular theory, isn’t it?

The Russell Brand Conspiracy TheoryThis one hurts me the most to talk about cause I love that Russell Brand has been so outspoken as of late. The Trewsis great and I find myself agreeing with just about everything he says but more importantly, agreeing with how he arrived at those conclusions. He may not have all of the answers but he has shown time and again that he is not afraid to ask the right questions. He has the charisma of a great leader, the eloquence of a great orator and the humor and humility of a real human being. He makes no apologies for his shortcomings and actually acknowledges them and is very open about his past struggles with drugs and current struggles with narcissism and all of the trappings of fame. I listen to him and I feel like someone else gets me and that maybe, just maybe, everything will be ok.
So, bearing that in mind, imagine how I would feel if tomorrow morning I woke up and #RussellBrandRapesYoungBoys was trending?

I would be devastated and honestly probably a little embarrassed, which seems like a petty emotion given the fact that little boys are being allegedly raped. But then I have posted a lot of his videos, and now like Peter denying he knew Jesus to the Roman soldiers I would try and distance myself from the alleged pedophile rapist. The conversation about Russell Brand would be less about the merit of what he was saying and more about who he was raping and how criminally underage they were. All the great ideas he has talked about would almost be taboo because to mention anything that even smelled like an idea he posited would be to support the rape of children.
I hope I’m wrong about this and that it never happens, but defaming figureheads is a powerful tactic to stymie a movement; look at what happened to Wikileaks after Julian Assange was charged with sexual assault; the conversation ceased to be about malfeasance in Iraq and became about the character of the founder. Fuck, the allegations wouldn’t even have to be true, as anyone who disagreed with what Brand said would cling to the notion that he was a pedophile even if he was cleared. It’s an ugly business, slander is. But it happens. I hope it doesn’t though…

I hope you enjoyed my predictions and maybe some day I’ll be vindicated by being proven right. But I really hope not :-S

There is a saying about jesters being able to speak “truth to power,” which comes from a tradition of nobility keeping jesters/fools around to say the shit that all of their peers wouldn’t. Being fools, they weren’t expected to be tactful or genteel. On the contrary, they were expected to be abrasive and severe when spittin’ that realness. In my view, this tradition persists today in a more contemporary incarnation, The Comedian. Comedians today often get their yuks from criticizing the individuals, power structures and taken for granted customs and institutions that no else thinks to or is brave enough to.

But what of the aforementioned peers, those other nobles of good breeding and refinement who knew better than to speak the brazen truth to people’s faces and instead mastered the arts of diplomacy, small talk and niceties? I would posit that this tradition carries on today in the world of politics. Politicians and statesmen are the noblemen of modern times, and while they are not landed gentry per se, they still run the land and the serfs/people on it.

So from this (admittedly generalized) perspective we have an historical precedent for what we (okay, I) see going on today: Namely, the people we should be taking the most seriously are those who are laughed at and taken lightly, while we hang on every word politician’s say, knowing full well as they are speaking to us that every word is a lie, calculated to convey as little as possible and obfuscate the actual workings of the state entity. However, due to the longevity of said entity and also the various political parties, we tend to view their words as somehow being more important and worth rallying behind.

Instead, we gotta rally behind the words that actually have meaning (not necessarily the people who say them) and start laughing off and then forgetting the words that sound pretty but don’t actually say anything.

In the last couple months I created an account on Reddit after hearing about how it was the best place in the internet; the internet of course being the best place in the world. I have taken to it slowly, due mostly to the fact that I didn’t really appreciate that I could subscribe to niche “subreddits” that would cater to my particular, peculiar tastes (CHECK OUT r/SPACEDICKS … IT’S TERRIFIC!!!). From a subreddit devoted to “The Wire” to r/supershibe, haven for doge worship…

…there’s just about anything you could want. At some point, probably while looking for a Matrix subreddit to post a wicked funny image I made…

I KNOW IT’S PRETTY HILARIOUS, BUT DON’T LOL TOO HARD, GAIS!

…I happened across r/TheRedPill. Naively, I assumed it would be a forum of like-minded dissidents who had “woken up” to the deep, structural injustice in society.

Well, I was half right, but only in the worst way possible.

You see, TRP is devoted to the disenfranchised male of the species taking back the power from oppressive women. Still naive, I assumed this was a repackaging of the much-maligned Pick-Up Artist (PUA)/Seduction community popularized by Neil Strauss’ 2005 book, “The Game.” I always felt the PUA/S community was unfairly demonized when it attained mainstream popularity because certain core principles were overlooked and it was derided as simply “manipulating women.” Naturally, women took offense to the idea that men might be ninja’ing their brains and fledgling Pick-Up Artists who would quote material and routines verbatim were spotted, scorned and ostracized in the backlash.
However, if women took the time to look a little deeper, the core principles are actually self-improvement, taking charge of your life and gaining fulfillment in love and sex. Nobody talks about that part but most savvy modern women are familiar with the “Neg.” Well bravo, that’s like reducing the profession of nurse simply to one who wipes the asses of bed-ridden patients. It’s insulting, reductive and inaccurate.
I’m not gonna argue the relative merits of Pick-Up Artistry beyond saying that since my introduction to the community there has been a corresponding improvement in my dealings with the opposite sex and more importantly, a diversification and broadening of my own experiential base and character, vis a vis life in general. Notice, I said “corresponding,” not “causal,” meaning you can be like me, take the truth from a given source and use what works to your advantage. Conversely, you can also take certain ideas and incorporate them into a philosophy of fear, revenge, subjugation and dehumanization.

Like I said, I was a little naive exploring this sub, and more than a little excited to be among others like me. After lurking for a time and getting some good leads on self-improvement material (Check out “The Black Phillip Show” from the late Patrice O’Neal) I was emboldened to make a post which posited a connection between the (perceived) necessity of PUA/S techniques among males and the unfortunate reality that we live in a competitive society whose operant mechanism is scarcity. I inquired as to whether others thought that a more egalitarian society where we did not always have to game for advantage would bring an end to the commodity-status of female sexuality/women using sex as a bargaining chip, and men treating their time (time not having sex) the same way.* A pretty straight-forward well-reasoned question if you ask me. ASK ME!!!
What damned me was my good-natured, well-intended good-bye: “Til that day, game righteously and leave her better than you found her.”
Pardon my language, but on the strength of that insignificant addendum niggaz was wilin’ on me!

“Yes. We most certainly were.”

Without even addressing my question most people simply attacked my farewell. The amount of vitriol I received for supposing that you could enrich a woman’s life by being a part of it was a complete shock to me. It was made abundantly clear to me that a woman’s value diminished with every new interaction (i.e. sex partner) she had and that for a man to get what he wanted a woman would necessarily have to be diminished. So I’m sorry to every girl I ever slept with, but you fucked up.
Amazed by this I took a closer look at some of the suggested reading the subreddit provided links to and was amazed that there was a movement of males who felt that the biggest threat to men today was rampant feminism and that misandry victims were really invisible victims.
Feminism?…really?

Now allow me to put my cards on the table real quick to dispel any notions of “white-knighting” on my part.

Ahem…fuck feminism.** I got no use for it or any other ‘-ism’ notion.

That said, I don’t fear that the feminazis are coming to get me and in turn use that fear to justify mistreatment of women. It turns out however that a whole community of men do. Call me old-fashioned (or a beta, liberal-fag, leftard, pussy) but I just think that relationships can be mutually beneficial and fulfilling. Is it difficult? Yes, especially in the context of a competitive socio-economic system where everyone, including a romantic partner, can be rightfully suspected of trying to take you for all you have, which really ties into the original question in my post.
But it is possible, and moreover, I would say its desirable.

You see when it comes down to it, I class both feminism and the TRP movement as outgrowths of inequality. Every disenfranchised group is gonna find some ‘other’ to blame. But sometimes “others” can be amorphous and hard to define. Blaming the other gender is mad easy though; its an “other” as old as the species itself. And, big surprise here, it doesn’t make your situation any better.

If you think one of these pics represents worse violence than the other then you just might be part of the problem.

In closing I want to say that there is truth in everything if you have eyes to decode it and see it. In the case of feminism, this is especially true; whatever the root causality, there are unique challenges that women go through that it is foolish to try and deny. I think not acknowledging this is an affront to women.
Similarly, the Red Pill has a lot of good stuff in it but you gotta be willing to wade through a lot of hatred and antipathy. Moreover, there are some guys who responded thoughtfully, if cynically, to my post, which shows that you can’t just broadly paint any group as good or bad based on the loudest members.

Best,
-Andre Guantanamo

*I realize this is an oversimplified expression of male/female relations but it is an expedient one for the point I was trying to make.

**When well-intentioned issues-based movements gain too much clout and become too established they become burdensome to anyone who isn’t championed explicitly by that cause. Please read more about my thoughts on the subject here.

Something occurred to me last night as I was getting ready for bed. Let me explain it in a roundabout way, my preferred method of explanation: You see, I have been following the buildup to World War III for about a year now, and before the US was making overtures toward attacking Syria in an attempt to goad Iran into conflict, it was stroking itself to the idea of attacking Iran directly.

While that more direct route was being considered, Russia and China had already made statements to the effect of, “We will fight you if you attack Iran,” “You fuck with Iran and you fuck with us.” These sentiments from the once and current Communist blocs have not really changed too much even though the US is considering a more meandering route to Iran. Notably, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been very vocal about condemning Obama, and, in light of these criticisms of American war-mongering and his harbouring of Edward Snowden, he has gotten a weird sort of good guy image makeover in the view of the West.

This heel/face turn has been helped along by the letter (incorrectly attributed to Putin) “From Russia With Love,” which was written in the Russian President’s voice and has been making the viral rounds.

So yeah, it seems like Vladimir Putin is a pretty cool guy.

But if that’s the case, then why do I not feel right about singing his praises and vaunting him as the last bastion against American imperial expansion?

Well for starters lets rhyme off the superficial reasons for mistrusting Putin:

2) This is the same dude who has taken a heavy hand with feminist activists, Pussy Riot.

3) This is the same dude who has taken a heavy hand with gay rights activists.

4) This is the same dude who has taken a heavy hand with Chechens.

Hmmm, all these factors combined certainly make me reconsider my earlier statement that Putin is a pretty cool guy, but they don’t really account for my incredulity with regard to his good guy image. I think my mistrust has more to do with IMPOSED DUALITIES.

Imposed DualitiesDo you ever notice that most of the choices you are presented with come down to two main options? And while often these choices are only distinguished from each other by the most superficial of differences, people will still make great judgments about you and your character based on which of the two you choose.
Let’s review some of these dualities:

Evil vs. Good

Dark vs. Light

It’s no accident that both sides of any of these choices are broadly similar and superficial differences are emphasized to create the illusion of diversity. A good example would be how many video game retailers will have retailer exclusive DLC for games pre-ordered from them. In the game Batman: Arkham City for example, you could get various costumes for Batman depending on where you pre-ordered your game. Voila; diversity of choice!

This is what freedom of choice looks like.

I have a hunch that its also no coincidence that red and blue are used extensively for the purposes of distinguishing broadly similar factions/parties from one another. I am no colour psychologist though, so I’m not exactly sure what this denotes.

However, I want to draw attention to the last red vs. blue duality I included:

Most people probably recognized this as denoting the rivalry between the American Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. These two parties have often been accused of being broadly similar in recent years,

yet they manage to keep the veneer of differentiation though head-butting on issues like women’s rights, gay rights, fighting insurgency, etc. However, since they are both essentially fed by the same hands,

there are necessarily proverbial hands that both parties won’t bite. This is not to say its a grand conspiracy where the wealthy elite control the puppets.

On the contrary, its a rather common and disingenuous conspiracy where parties and politicians recognize where their self-interest lies and make the appropriate choices to maintain their positions of power vis-a-vis campaign funding, airtime and favourable press.

Furthermore, do you notice how any up-and-coming candidate for the presidency (and by association, senate and congress seats) always pledges to undo the wrongs of his predecessor should he be elected? This angle resonates with those disaffected most with the existing administration while polarizing the incumbent’s base, a base who, though they might not be 100% satisfied with their candidate’s performance when held up to his campaign promises, still prefers to stay the current course rather than make a departure

So how does this relate to Putin?

Well, someone’s gotta be the bad guy and someone’s gotta be the good. That is, someone’s gotta be red and someone’s gotta be blue.

If you think about it, in spite of his newfound popularity, Putin is not so different from Obama: He criticizes Obama for his handling of the Snowden affair while openly admitting that he would have prosecuted a similar Russian whistle-blower for treason. You might recognize this position as the broad similarity I mentioned earlier when talking about imposed dualities and intra-national politics. It seems that broadly similar imposed dualities exist at the international/global level of politics as well.

“It’s not about the one I like more, its about picking the one I hate least.” (Paraphrase)-Cynical Voters

Putin vs. Obama is the latesst permutation of Obama vs. Bush*, and in each case the appeal of the former is a direct function of how dissimilar they appear to be to the latter and how much the latter is hated.

I think if we apply this view of imposed dualities at all levels of politics (global, national, provincial, regional, state, municipal, INTERGALACTIC!!!) we will see it represented faithfully, which to me is a testament to its truth. And it follows that if we should avoid getting fooled by the smoke and mirrors at one level (say, national politics), then we should avoid getting fooled by the smoke & mirrors at all other levels as well. In all cases we must look past the obvious conflict which is being presented to us and see who is benefiting no matter which side wins.

CUI BONO?

Best,
-Andre Guantanamo

*I realize Obama never ran against Bush but he was touted as being the remedy to two Bush terms and two un-winnable wars.